At Tuhama’s Lebanese deli in Dearborn and at bakeries and barbershops throughout town, it’s no secret the CIA is looking for a few good spies.
“There is a lot of talk and nobody likes it,” said Hamze Chehade, a 48-year-old Lebanese-American, taking a bite of his chicken shawarma.
In dire need of agents fluent in Arabic, the CIA has made an unusual public show of its recruiting effort in Dearborn — a city of 100,000, with the densest Arab population in the US.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The agency has bought full-page ads in Arabic-language newspapers and it is rolling out TV ads aimed at luring Arab-Americans and Iranian-Americans to spycraft.
But despite a weak economy and high unemployment, the CIA will find it hard to hire here, residents say. Many see US foreign policy in the Middle East as misguided and anger over the perceived mistreatment of Arab-Americans runs deep.
It won’t be easy to win hearts and minds here, they say.
“If anyone goes, they would be just going for the money, not following the heart,” said Chehade, a cabinet-maker who immigrated from Lebanon 21 years ago.
CIA recruiters said the agency sorely needs speakers of Arabic and other languages because of the intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan and the continuing US occupation of Iraq.
“Obviously, with the wars going on in the Middle East, that’s really on America’s radar,” said Henry Medina, who is in charge of CIA recruiting in the Midwest.
“We’re going to recruit that knowledge, that language, the linguistics, the cultural nuances that are critical to fully understand the foes and enemies,” said Medina during a briefing for reporters who were shown the agency’s new ads.
One TV spot showed a dinner party at an Arab-American home, with a narrator intoning: “Your nation, your world. They’re worth protecting. Careers in the CIA.”
The camera zooms out to show the party taking place in a modern high-rise building, then a view of the US from outer space.
A second spot introduces five Arab-American professionals in turn — an engineer, a scientist, an economist, a lawyer and an academic — then shows them together announcing: “We work for the CIA.”
“We’re trying to demystify the agency. We don’t want people to only see us as being something like what you see in the movies or spy novels,” CIA recruiter Zahra Roberts said.
The CIA declined to disclose the cost of the ad campaign or detail the number of Arab-American recruits it wants to hire.
Leaders in Dearborn’s Arab community said they welcomed efforts to make US intelligence agencies more inclusive.
But they said people have grown wary of the government’’ use of wiretaps and informants in the Arab-American community.
Strict enforcement of immigration laws and delays at airports and border crossings for Arab-Americans have also created a backlash, they said.
“People have been told: ‘Your name is Mohammed; your name is Ahmed; you must be a terrorist,’” said Osama Siblani, Lebanese-born publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News. “How do you bring people into the government when they have been subjected to a great deal of discrimination?”
“You have to believe that what you are doing is the right thing, otherwise you are just a gun for hire,” he said.
Siblani, whose newspaper runs CIA ads, met CIA Director Leon Panetta during a September visit to Dearborn. “I said, treat us like Americans,” he said. “We love America, but does America love us?”
Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, agreed that many Arab-Americans were torn between feelings of patriotism and resentment of US government policy at home and abroad.
“I think transparency will do a lot more than airing TV commercials. There’s a large amount of fear and mistrust with the government,” Walid said.
People of Middle Eastern origin make up more than one-third of Dearborn’s 100,000 residents.
“It’s not lack of patriotism. It’s questioning of wrong policy,” said Mohammed, a 24-year-old graduate student of Libyan descent who asked not to use his last name.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in